Spring has near enough sprung I guess.

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I base this on the enactment of the sacred yearly ritual observed by my neighbors, whom we will call the Mumbles. Mr. Mumble has been hard at work on this compelling annual task all morning. First of all he rakes the roots of his still brown grass almost down to the bedrock, then he picks up by hand what would have become his lawn and bags it. Out comes the mower, set to the lowest shave setting, although I truly believe he has tinkered with the thing to get it even lower than manufacturers lowest settings. Next comes another all encompassing raking and hand bagging, followed by another mowing. His…what should I call it now?…bare roots are now at least three inches below my emerging grass, just beginning to green up.  He, Mr. Mumble, is now stood with Mrs. Mumble, admiring this new desert of brown dirt, he is his lumberjack shirt and yellow peaked cap, carefully chosen to look for all the world like a laborer’s hard hat, (I had to do a double-take), and she in her Daisy Dukes and crop top. I did mention this is a retired couple, no?  I try not to look at her fashion choices in the warmer months as I do not want them indelibly blazed into my retinas.

In about two weeks, the first panic will begin to set in when we dethatch our grass and give it the first lite, high trim. Their brown desert will not have altered in any way whatsoever. They might as well be living in Arizona without an underground irrigation system. This will result in more of their rakings and mowings of what is rapidly becoming a hard, mud patch. Rinse and repeat all summer with occasional sprinklings of lawn fertilizer to no avail.

No, we don’t say anything to them from the comfort of our lush greenness, for that would be discourteous and imply they were incapable of observation. Besides, our other retired neighbor, whom we shall call ‘Mr. Bighead’ is full of good advice he likes to impart to others when he isn’t intent on impressing them with his material possessions. Aside from that, the Mumble’s grass has become a local attraction with people coming from far and wide to observe this peculiar phenomenon. It would be unsporting to spoil the fun.

Interests, or lack thereof.

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I find I am very picky who I choose to follow or follow in return on Twitter. People generally put that which is most important to them in a prominent place in their profile and it is a great indication of what sort of things they will tweet about.

Anything remotely to do with politics with send me running away as it is a very personal issue with most people and I don’t find it interesting. Likewise, any mention of any sort of religion and I will head for the hills. This is a highly personal issue that is again, subject to opinions, which I don’t want to hear. Religious instruction has those people highly qualified to do just that and it is not a function of those on twitter.

Flames wars, or nasty, snarky comments are also a way to get unfriended. Don’t have time for negativity and never will.

To plant or not to plant, that is the question.

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Yes, I do know it is April, but I am in Alberta, Western Canada and although I can see the grass starting, we may well get more snowfall and I know we will get more frosts.

No, I do not propose to put out any bedding plants and haven’t bought any yet. That is as good as waving a flag at the weather fairy to say ‘Come dump on me’. What I was proposing to put in was a part of my new, bright, shiny plan. I thought I would put perennial bulbs in the planters to be the focal center. Things like bleeding hearts and begonias, freesias and calla lilies…things to give the planters height and maybe stick some in the hanging baskets, too. It wouldn’t really matter if they got snowed on as they take awhile to get going underground anyhow.

Yep, I am getting antsy as I feel I am being teased by this warm spell. I know I can’t dig in the flower beds as they will still be frozen solid, but not so the planters, all in warm locations.  I am also hoping my peonies have survived though I won’t know until the end of May. I have an idea they make a winter snack for hibernating mice and such. As long as I haven’t got a gofer I don’t mind. Mice and voles end up as cat snacks in the summer, so don’t get to be a problem and Alberta doesn’t have rats so I don’t have to be too worried about what the cats are stalking.

I’d love some support.

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My thunderclap promotion for Shadow Over Avalon ends tomorrow at noon, Mountain Time. If anyone who hasn’t already supported it feels like doing so, to increase the thunderousness of the thing, then that would be awesome. I am not shy of numbers and the campaign will go ahead. I just sort of would like it to have an even more wicked reach than it does already. http://thndr.it/1BSALSI

Without Electricity.

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In most fantasy settings there is not electricity, which brings its own complications. Think about this for a few seconds. No power means no washers, no dryers, no stoves, no vacuums, no coffee makers, no furnaces, no hot water tanks, no hair dryers…the list goes on and on.

Suddenly, it is easy to see why women stayed home to look after the house and the kids after marriage in an average household. Now think about a fantasy setting. Cooking will need to be done over some sort of solid fuel range, or an open fire. Hot water for washing clothes will also come from the said range/open fire, as will any hot water for ablutions. Ever wondered how long it would take to do a weekly wash of clothes for two? I can attest that is pans out to three hours from initial scrubbing to hanging on the line as I had no washer or dryer when my dear husband and I first married.

What we have is affected with what we have to clean. Fitted carpets did not appear until after the advent of vacuum cleaners of the electric kind. Area rugs were taken out to be slung over a washing line and had the bejesus beaten out of them prior to this. Oh and washing clothes? Don’t forget the need to make your own detergent.

Eating happens three times a day, so prep time has to happen and everything has to be diced/grated by hand. Downtime? Well clothes are kind of essential, both in the making and the repair. See where I am going with this? Where has the leisure time gone? Right down the toilet that doesn’t exist as this requires indoor plumbing as well as gravitational infrastructure leading to a treatment plant outside for anaerobic processes. Okay, so we are into chamber pots and disappearing behind bushes for the necessary. Notice what is missing here? No time for hobbies that are not productive, like reading, writing and art. I guess this is why the dark ages were called precisely that.

Fun time in research

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I take my research very, very seriously. Most of it doesn’t show in the books, but it is there as a solid framework from which to build. Now here is something serious Arthur fans might enjoy and you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t interested, would you? Grins.

A free Arthurian documentary with some wonderful views of ancient British sites. http://bestfreedocumentaries.org/britain-ad-king-arthurs-britain-episode-2/Snow day May 29 2010 158Snow day May 29 2010 070Snow day May 29 2010 097

A child’s tale of wonder and woe.

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I was a very late baby and naturally, all my cousins were adult and rather boring to the kid I was. It really wasn’t much fun being dragged over to go to supper with them except for one small and wondrous reason. My elderly aunt had given my cousin and his wife the book ‘Waterbabies’ by Charles Kingsley and illustrated by Linley Sambourne. This was a book to lift a child out of a boring adult world into one of fantasy and delight, sorrow and battles. The whole miserable cousin visit was worth it just for the brief glance I got at this book each time.

I say brief glance as that is all it was. Once I had seen two illustrations or read three paragraphs my cousin’s wife took it away as ‘I might damage it, being only a child’. Actually, I was very careful with my things, which are still in good enough condition for my grandsons to play with, but there it was, a wicked tease and I never did get to see all of it.

The problem was psychological of course. My cousin’s wife had wanted kids and my cousin did not and would not alter his stance. My appearance rubbed salt in those wounds that became apparent to me when I had my own dear little daughters. My cousin and his wife developed convenient colds/flu at the event of each of the girl’s baptisms and therefore didn’t come to even one of them. They were busted on the last occasion when my French aunt decided to go visit after the celebration of our third daughter as she thought she would get some sort of evening refreshment, not that she wanted much as we had laid a good spread. Well, they didn’t have colds, or they had been cured by a miracle by the time she got there and my aunt didn’t get any refreshment offered aside from a hot beverage. She had to take herself to a restaurant after waiting in vain for some sandwiches and cake. Did I mention my cousin and his wife were mean, too?  Anyhow, they never once got to see my girls while we lived close by, not that I considered it a great loss in light of the book tease that I feared would be repeated. We were simply told it wasn’t convenient to visit. Fair enough.

Naturally the book was not passed down to me in their will. It went to my cousin’s wife’s family, who had no small children. Not really fair when it came from our side of the family, but there it is. Anyhow, now I have found a copy and it is on its way. Printed in 1908, it is the unabridged version; in other words it hasn’t been hacked to death by Puffin, who are offering their modern copies for sale.

A writer’s work is very much an essence of the writer and essentially a writer’s voice. Altering words and taking out whole phrases because they are ‘politically incorrect’ is to desecrate the book and its original intention. Kingsley was a Victorian moralist, who thought to teach life lessons to children through his work, which was also a swipe at some of the things he found to be objectional in his place in time. Bits poking gentle fun at America have been cut, as have a lot of references to the social inequality in the UK. I believe the book was even banned at one time as the little chimney sweep was referred to as ‘black’. Well, he swept chimneys by climbing up inside them. What color would he be? But someone decided it was derogatory to black people and so it was banned. Personally, I happen to think the real offense was done by the person making such a decision, comparing clean black people to a dirty little sweep. But whatever, the book, warts and all is on its way to me and I shall finally get to read it all the way through and see every illustration. For a short time a child’s sense of wonder will be returned in full measure.Cold and clear.Grimes in Hell

Who should not, under any circumstances, write a book

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The heading belongs to anyone who writes a cook book when it is so obvious that they have no idea what they are doing and can’t, in actual fact, cook.

I wanted to make a chocolate gateau today and went to a book I had entitled ‘the chocolate lover’s cookbook.’ Anyone that knows me is aware that I am not a chocolate fan and I do believe this is the first time I have opened this book since it was gifted to me. Just as well, as it happens.

Ok, so my baking skills are fairly simplistic, so I am the type of person to need a recipe for something fancy. I am following the instructions meticulously, all the while thinking to myself about the strangeness of not using margarine or oil and folding in stiff egg whites. I am supposed to divide the result into two greased springform cake tins. Here is where the light bulb goes on in the attic. Even I can see that there is not enough mixture to go into two. There is barely enough for one and I have the right size. I checked. Well, maybe I am wrong and it will rise up like a mountain while cooking? Meanwhile, on to plan B, find another recipe that looks ‘normal’ and get some mixture going for the other pan.

Show time. I have the makings of a cake, but not a gateau. I split the secondary cake into two layers and start to assemble, thinking to put the first effort in the middle. However, when I pick up the first effort I find I have, in fact, constructed a fairly substantial frisbee. Unfortunately these have been out of style since the eighties. The thing is so hard it could probably gouge a hole in steel. No, I can’t add this to the other two layers. I would prefer people not to smash their jaws trying to eat.

After a search, I found a red marker pen and have duly anointed the recipe with the annotation NFG. I shall look through the rest of the book when I have a moment, but I rather think I shall be filing it under G for garbage. I have no idea if the person who wrote this recipe guessed their ingredients and just put down what they thought they had used, or if they cooked a concrete burger and thought this was an appropriate addition to the book their were constructing. What is clear is this person should never have been allowed near a printing press.